Republican Rep. Calling for Uprising if Healthcare Reform Passes

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Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has laid out a strategy to pass health care reform in the next couple of days by allowing the House to vote on the details of the reconciliation package instead of the Senate bill itself. As usual, progressives are fretting that winning will make them look bad. On the other hand, conservatives are baying for blood and calling for revolution.

‘Deem and pass’

Nick Baumann of Mother Jones discusses the parliamentary tactic known as “deem and pass” (D&P), which House Democrats plan to use to avoid voting for the Senate bill before the Senate fixes the bill through reconciliation. The House doesn’t want to sign a blank check. If the health care bill passes the House first, there’s no guarantee that the Senate will make the fixes as promised.

Originally, the hope was that the Senate could do reconciliation first. The problem is that you can’t pass a bill to amend a bill that isn’t law yet. That would be like putting the cart before the horse. To clear that hurdle, the House will invoke a rule that deems that Senate bill to have passed if and when the House passes the reconciliation package. It’s sort of like backdating a check. Ryan Grim explains the process in more detail on Democracy Now!

D&P does not equal treason

Progressives like Kevin Drum worry that D&P will make the Democrats look bad. Meanwhile, the Tea Party crowd is calling for Nancy Pelosi to be tried for treason, as TPM reports. The bottom line is that D&P is no big deal. Republicans used the process 36 times in 2005 and 2006; Democrats used it 49 times in 2007 and 2008. D&P is constitutional. We know because it has already been upheld by the Supreme Court. Kevin Drum writes, “If you have a life, you don’t care about the subject of this post and have never heard of it.”

Teabag revolution

There is no joy in Tea Party Land, as Dave Weigel reports in the Washington Independent. The tea baggers are frantically lobbying to stop the bill, but the reality is starting to sink in. Their leaders are shifting from trying to kill the bill to planning the tantrum they’re going to throw when it passes:

While many held out hope that plans to pass the Senate’s version of reform in the House would stall out, others pondered their next steps. Some, like Rep. Steve King (R-IA), took a dark view of what might come.

“Right now, they’re civil, because they think they have a chance of stopping this bill,” said King to reporters, waving his arm at a pack of “People’s Surge” activists forming a line to enter the Cannon House Office Building. “The reason we don’t have violence in this country like they do in dictatorships is because we have votes, and our leaders listen to their constituents. Now we’re in a situation where the leaders are defying the people!” Later, King would expand on those remarks and speculate on a possible anti-Washington revolt in which Tea Parties would “fill the streets” of the capital.

Sounds like King is calling for a revolution, doesn’t it? As it turns out, that’s exactly what he says he wants if health care reform passes. Eric Kleefeld of TPMDC reports that King is hoping for something akin to the uprising that overthrew the Communists in Prague in 1989. “Fill this city up, fill this city, jam this place full so that they can’t get in, they can’t get out and they will have to capitulate to the will of the American people,” King said in an interview with the Huffington Post.

In The American Prospect, Michelle Goldberg urges feminists to support reform anyway. She argues that the women suffer disproportionately under the status quo. If reform passes, it will insure 17 million previously uninsured women. Expanding health care coverage might help reverse rising maternal mortality rates in the United States.

A recent report by Amnesty International found that at least two women die in childbirth every day in the U.S., a much higher rate than most developed countries. The anti-choicers had the advantage because they were willing to kill health reform over abortion. The pro-choice faction did not allow itself the luxury of nihilism.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint.

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83 comments

June,
I am not one of the people you are referring to, but I have to ask, How has Obama changed any of the policies on handling any of the problems you blame on Bush. He hasn't changed a thing and is throwing more money at the corporations you complain about than Bush did. He has not changed any of the policies that Bush used concerning the problems you mentioned, and is spending more money in his short time in office than Bush did in 8 years.

The simpletons of the nation are rallying in the streets. I guess they did not get their way. They are really showing their a##es. I hope they arrest the idiots throwing bricks through windows. The dems didn't act like this when George W. was running his archaic heathen antics while in office. But the people sure were not going to let another Rep. in control. He was probably the most law breaking, against the people, president of all time. We lost our jobs, our homes, we were robbed by wall street and the financial industry, that charged outrageous fees and interest rates. He made his oil buddies rich. Big business was given more control than at any other time in our history. All of this at the expense of the American people. What a fine upstanding citizen he is. His constituants are no better. If they have their way, big business will continue running America and the tax payers will continue to pay. I'll take my chances with Obama anyday. You Rep. continue to be proud of your lunatics.

Roger H,
As I stated before, the tea baggers are a pretty soft bunch. No riots. No shutdowns. Nothing but spitting and racist name calling.

There is no impending collapse of the private healthcare system, in fact their stocks had a rally, they embraced it. Not at all what you claimed your poll predicted.

And it is a blatant lie about 38 states challenging the constitutionality of making Americans pay for a policy. We make Americans pay for auto insurance and that's legal. Only a handful of overly red states are filing suit.

Another lie you have stated is that the IRS now has unlimited power over people who don't buy a policy.? False again. They get a 95 dollar fine.

There seems to be no limit to the fearmongering and truth distortions you are willing to tell. With all the really bad things in the bill, you could have saved your reputation and integrity by telling the truth, but you didn't bother.

Please!! Do not forget that our Military,that now patrols American streets,and!! the Cops that spend their entire work life lying,and waiting to be told what to do, will KILL any American if told to...even their own Mother`s if they happen to be in the crowd.
How the hell do you think "Barry" plans to "Transform" America...with the newly trained "Boy Scouts?

I wonder if Americans from the frothing rabid right, realize, or even care, how utterly pig-stupid they are making their country appear to all of us millions of folk from countries who have the sort of health care that Obama is trying to establish.
You poor pathetic dupes to the big money merchant aristocracy spin machine.
Remember this when you are rotting in the destitution that your precious imbecile Bush and his handlers bequeathed you. Remember this when you find that the only reason you have any access to medical care at all is because the government provides it to you regardless of your finances. Remember this when the day arrives, and it will, that you don't have a hope of meeting the increasingly exorbitant payments to demonstrably black-hearted insurance companies who would stiff you in a flash, like they have to countless others, for the slightest reason even if you could pay.
When that day comes, and you're gasping your last breath in agony for want of a medical procedure that your government will provide, hold you head up high, stand by your twisted principles and refuse the aid that will save you. Do your nation a favor and stop wasting my oxygen.

Mary Swan,
You are exactly correct! The Republicans even have several plans for health care reform, but are being portrayed as not wanting any health care reform. There is no actual cost reduction to health insurance if this bill passes. The taxes will be passed down to us in increased premium prices and health care costs. When even progressives who are posting here are against the bill, that should tell you how bad it is. This bill gives the IRS total control of your finances and wages if you don't buy health insurance.
38 states have joined in preparing to file a suit against the federal government to stop the federal government from overstepping it's authority over the interstate commerce portion of the Constitution by requiring their residents to buy insurance. Virginia has passed a law to exempt their residents from the provision the forces their residents to buy insurance or face the IRS or jail. Forcing everyone to buy insurance is to be one of the major ways to cover the costs of the program and if there is this much resistance by the states on that portion of the bill, it should tell the Democratic leadership that they need to step back and take another look at the bill or there will be mass rebellion by the states. Forcing the bill through using creative parliamentarian procedures in the House to avoid a vote on the bill will cost the Democrats dearly in November and I think some of the smarter ones are realizing it is the wrong way to go.

Thanks Roger, Just to be clear, are saying that is not health care reform that most Americans are fighting against but rather this current bill which is ineffective? That makes some sense to me but doesn't necessarily fit fit a lot of the retoric I have been reading from the less "progressive" side of this debate.